Best of the Worst of Shovelware May 8th

G-Force (All current systems):
Sometimes I run across games that actually look good but just leave me scratching my head. G-Force is one of them. It brings a whole new meaning to la muerte peluda as you play as a member of a team of elite secret agent guinea pigs. Somebody’s been tearing up the Riverbank so Hammie Hamster is opening up a can of whoopass on his enemies. Well, unfortunately no. There’s actually nothing explaining the game’s story, just some gameplay videos. As far as I can tell, this is a Rachet & Clank clone. The enemies are common houshold appliances that appear to be controlled by Skynet. It’s being developed by Disney Interactive who seems to be churning out games people over six actually want to play, such as last year’s ATV racer Pure.

My Pokemon Ranch (Wii):
Ah, here it is, Pokemon moves to shovelware with this crappy Wii title. Since I’m working on a Pokemon retrospective, this is definitely worth adding this to our list of the weird and the shovelful. The game has been out for a year but was recently updated to include the Platinum additions to the Pokedex. Nearly universally panned, My Pokemon Ranch has been describe as a sit and stare screen saver. You can transfer Pokemon from your DS onto the Wii for storage and you can interact with them only on a vary limited basis. Apparently you can also trade via the Wii as well. You play as your Mii avatar rather than characters from the game. The graphics are absolutely terrible. They’re blocky and the textures are limited to simple gouraud shaded models. This is about as basic as 3D graphics can get, even falling behind the N64 in terms of quality; nowhere near what the Wii is capable of. The Pokemon are reduced to small, cute avatars that only bare basic resemblance to their concept artwork. It would be something if they were at least full size as they appear in the Pokedex. Unfortunately, Pokemon never really did translate well to the 3D platform beyond the Smash Bros. series. Nintendo wants 1000 points for this, which equates to $10 of real money. That would be $10 too much considering that full N64 titles cost on the virtual console are sold for the same amount.